Saturday, February 28, 2015

Some additional photos that I ran across on this very interesting aircraft. With a better overhead shot of it in flight. The last three candid snapshots were taken by me on 6/28/1975 while the bird was on the St. Louis McAir ramp.

Friday, February 27, 2015

From a McAir open house in the early 1980’s come these walk around photos of F-15A-13MC 75-0030 (128/A110) and F-15C 81-0036 (776/C219). Both from 1st Fighter Wing, 71 FS "Ironmen," based at Langley AFB, Virginia.

F-15A-13MC 75-0030 later came “home” to serve with the Missouri Air National Guard at Lambert Field across from the McDonnell Douglas plant in which it was built!

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

In July of 1998, I visited the Imperial War museum in London, England. A wonderful place with a V-1, V-2 and many other goodies. Their web site is here. As exhibits change from time to time, it is nice to see a museum at various times thru the decades.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

A selection of F-4’s in unusual paint schemes. I have always loved the Bicentennial Phantom Scheme! It was an F-4J-27-MC (153088) from VX-4. Also presented is a great article by Robert Simon and Greg Reynolds on some of these aircraft. Enjoy!

Thursday, February 19, 2015

A brochure put out by General Electric on the F404 Turbofan engine used in the F-18 aircraft.

A bit of background: “In may 1975 the United States Navy selected the McDonnell Douglas / Northrop corporation to develop its F/A-18 Hornet fighter aircraft, which was powered by two F404-GE-400 engines. The first F404 engine test took place merely 1.5 years later in December 1976. Preliminary flight rating tests took place in May 1978 and the first flight of a F/A-18 powered by the F404 commenced in November 1978. Then, another year later the first production delivery took place in December 1979.” As detailed at DutchOps.com.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Jack Abercrombie recounts a brief history of the FastPacks (Fuel and Sensor Tactical Package), commonly known as the Conformal Fuel tanks (CFT), and the result of the first USAF evaluation of the FASTPACK back in 1975.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Another submission by Jack Abercrombie on the subtle differences between the prototype and the production CFT’s. These strap on fuel tanks have been called FastPacks, pallet or CFT’s at various stages of their development. As Jack put it: “These attachments illustrate the small differences between the Prototype and Production fuel pallets for the F-15. The images were part of a briefing I delivered to the F-15 DRF test group at Edwards in Feb 1983.”

Monday, February 16, 2015

Ange Wang made note (See comments below) that this is really an F-14A Tomcat aircraft from the Navy Fighter Weapons School painted to resemble an Iranian F-14 and not an actual Iranian bird. I thank him for setting this straight! Unfortunately, I still don’t know where I got these photos.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

The Missouri History Museum FAQ has a good description of this replica: “ This plane is a sister ship that was created by the same manufacturer — Ryan Airlines Corporation—a year later than the original Spirit of St. Louis. This plane was modified to match the Spirit’s exact dimensions for the 1957 movie, The Spirit of St. Louis, starring Jimmy Stewart. Oral histories claim that this plane was flown both by Stewart (a decorated WWII pilot) and by Lindbergh, who served as an advisor for the film. Acquired by the Museum in 1962, the plane was displayed at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport for many years until our 2000 addition created a space for it to be installed at the History Museum.The original plane is in the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.”

This replica has been in St. Louis a long time. The first three photos show it on the McAir ramp several times. The middle photos show it hanging in The Lambert St. Louis airport terminal on May 22, 1976. The last three photos show it hanging in it’s permanent home inside the Missouri History Museum.

This was a proposed reconnaissance version of the F/A-18A. It included a sensor package that replaced the 20 mm cannon. The first of two prototypes flew in August 1984. Small numbers were produced.[71]

RF-18D

Proposed two-seat reconnaissance version for the US Marine Corps in the mid-1980s. It was to carry a radar reconnaissance pod. The system was canceled after it was unfunded in 1988. This ability was later realized on the F/A-18D(RC)”

Monday, February 9, 2015

I have shown some of these lithos before; but, I thought that it would be nice to put them all together. These illustrate the early F-15 configuration with the short verticals and the ventral fins the same as in the full size mockup below.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Wikipedia has this to say about this radar. “The APG-63 was developed in the early 1970s and has been operational since 1973, and was installed on all F-15A/Bs. In 1979, it received a major upgrade and became the first airborne radar to incorporate a software programmable signal processor (PSP), and the PSP allowed the system to be modified to accommodate new modes and weapons through software reprogramming rather than by hardware retrofit. The APG-63 with PSP is one of the most important features that distinguishes earlier F-15 A/Bs from the F-15 C/Ds fitted with PSP, and with the exception of the final 43 (which are equipped with APG-70), all F-15 C/Ds are equipped with APG-63 with PSP.”

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

A few photos of a Missouri Air National Guard McDonnell F-4C-25-MC (64-0911) taken at one of The 131st Tactical Fighter Wing’s open houses. Also a CF-101B shot. I spliced together two photos for a better shot of the aircraft.

Monday, February 2, 2015

After several F-4 collisions and near misses in the 1960’s over the McAir test range, McAir developed a collision avoidance system called EROS for it’s aircraft (Think “Zero” instead of an “O”). The Eliminate Range Zero System was built into a Sparrow type body and carried anywhere the Sparrow would fit. While originally built for F-4 use, early F-15’s also used it until the early 1980’s when the FAA developed the TCAS system (Traffic Alert/Collision Avoidance System) and took over the duties. I don’t know how many EROS bodies were built; but, I have seen up to #47 in photos. In with the photos, I have included a Product support article explaining the system and a Tech Manual installation guide from here. While it did a good job on it’s primary mission (protecting McAir aircraft), it was an expensive system and the main flaw was that each aircraft had to be equipped with the installation. This was O.K. for all the McAir aircraft; but other military and civilian aircraft didn’t have it.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

One of the most interesting aircraft around during my working days was 62-12200. Among other things, it was the aircraft for the Fly-By-Wire program called Survivable Flight Control System (SFCS). This aircraft flew in two distinct configurations, with and without canards. It was built as an F-4B and modified into to a YRF-4C by configuration report 8995.

“This was one of the original YRF-4C prototypes that was converted into the YF-4E. The YF-4E was used in the development of the F-4E fighter as well as in fly-by-wire Precision Aircraft Control Technology (PACT) and Control Configured Vehicle (CCV) test programs. Three conversions. A "Fly-by-Wire" control system was installed in Number 266, and a distinctive color scheme was applied to the airplane for this flight test program, which commenced on 29 April 1972. The museum's airframe served as a prototype for the RF-4C reconnaissance version and later the F-4E fighter-bomber variant. It also was the test bed for such advanced ideas as F-4 leading edge slats and the "Fly-By-Wire" concept (electrical rather than mechanical interconnections between pilot and control surfaces). A final modification added distinctive wing-like canard surfaces to examine the Precision Aircraft Control Technology configuration for mission and performance improvements.”

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About Me

My name is Ron Downey. I am a retired Aeronautical Engineer who worked for McDonnell Aircraft and McDonnell Douglas Corp for 40 years and collected many photos, info and brochures of their products. While the F-4 is my favorite, I have many other MDC items and these will be scanned and presented here. In addition, I have been an aviation historian for most of my adult life and I have amassed a large amount of info over my 50+ years of collecting and will be bringing that here also. My aim is to bring aviation material (Photos, articles; etc) to this blog before it is lost; but, not in-depth explanations as any good search engine can be used for that purpose. I may be contacted at: aviationarchives(at)gmail.com

Copyright and Photo Credits

As all of this info was originally for my use only in order to build plastic scale models, I never paid too much attention to copyrights or proper photo credits. Therefore, if something is not credited correctly, please let me know and I will be happy to delete or properly credit the material. (I have in my possession all the items and original material and these are all new scans, except where noted.) All photos and info are credited to McDonnell Douglas unless otherwise noted. Feel free to use any of this info with the credit of Ron Downey via Aviation Archives. I can be reached at: aviationarchives(at)gmail.com.